According to its business plan for FY18-19, FASEA will receive funding from eight contributors under a funding agreement which binds the following parties:
- ANZ
- Bendigo Financial Planning
- CBA
- Macquarie Equities
- NAB
- Suncorp-Metway
- Westpac
- AMP
The document was released on the Treasury website as one of its freedom of information (FOI) disclosures.
“The funding agreement is based on a formula to calculate amounts due per quarter from each funder based on relative adviser numbers. Total funding provided is $3.9 million per year,” FASEA said.
FASEA revealed its total income until the end of FY21 is about $15.7 million.
On the expense front, the largest expense item was set for administering the adviser exam, with almost $5.9 million to be spent up until the end of FY21.
After that, $2.3 million will be allocated to remunerate the board, while $4.4 million will be set aside to remunerate executive and support staff.
About $2.2 million will be spent on ‘standard overheads’, with other notable expenses including setting education standards and accrediting courses ($117,612), setting professional year and CPD standards ($50,000) and developing the code of ethics ($25,000).
In November 2018, ifa revealed that FASEA paid a total of $370,641 to its nine board members, as well as $219,090 to its former chief executive Deen Sanders for his seven months in the top job from 18 September 2017 to 30 April this year.
[quote=Anonymous]hi everyone
have fasea released any provider of their ethics course? i am keen to complete it asap.
thank you [/quote]
You’re being facetious, right?
No, FASEAtious…
hi everyone
have fasea released any provider of their ethics course? i am keen to complete it asap.
thank you
Given the Code of Ethics was only finalised 2 weeks ago, FASEA themselves have advised it will take 6-8 weeks to “approve” a bridging course or qualification to meet their standard(s). So, you are looking at May 2019 at the earliest, unless of course The Ethics Centre has one ready to go beforehand.
I suspect the code was designed around “The Ethics Centre”.
FASEA is forcing advisers who have already done higher level ethics training to pay for additional ethics courses.
Australia’s main ethics course provider, the so called “Ethics Centre”, is run by a member of the FASEA Board. Who is policing the ethics of the ethicists?
The more you dig the bigger the conflicts get
“$4.4 million will be set aside to remunerate executive and support staff.” WHY? There’s nobody there. Have you ever tried contacting this mob. No one answers phones or responds to messages or emails. So who is creaming off the top?
“with other notable expenses including setting education standards and accrediting courses ($117,612), setting professional year and CPD standards ($50,000) and developing the code of ethics ($25,000)” isnt this what they are there for and it gets the loose change?????
If the FPA and AFA had any guts, they should lobby so that part of the ASIC Levy of [b]$26 Mill per year[/b] to fund FASEA.
This conflict of interest is beyond the pale. Vertical integration in products AND education.
So if FASEA is funded by the banks, what’s the ASIC Levy for?
(Dumb question?)
At $1,500 per adviser per year, the levy is expected to raise [b]$26 Mill per year[/b].
We pay, but no say.
Certainly would’ve made sense if FASEA was funded via the Levy.
Instead it’s via the banks. (Vertical integration – not just products, but education too? Hello??)
Nice work FASEA and RC – I can’t wait to scale your heights of professionalism and ethics.
No conflicts of interest here. Let’s all the drink the cool-aid and smile.
The ASIC levy is there to sue you when ASIC decides you are no longer competent.
Adrian Raftery on 15/2 on LinkedIn posed the following questions re FASEA
1. Should FASEA release copies of all submissions made by these 8 funders from throughout the whole consultation process?
2. Should FASEA release information on the minutes of regular meetings with these 8 funders?
3. Should there be greater scrutiny placed on the former employment (at some of these funders) of key FASEA personnel & board members & the key decisions made that may or may not mirror previous policies that they have been privy to?
4. Have all conflicts of interest been noted in FASEA board meetings?
5. Should there be an analysis conducted of the potential benefits that these funders could have derived from certain FASEA policies that have been made? duly
5. Should the breakdown of the $15.6m between the 8 funders be made public?
6. Should the cost of the exam be queried given that FASEA have already budgeted for $5.88m on top of adviser contributions of $594 each per sitting (calculated at $17m based on 28,650 advisers on FAR doing the exam just once)?
7. Should the contract between ACER & FASEA be public?
8. Should the financial relationships between these 8 funders & major Financial Planning Professional Bodies/Associations be disclosed?
Now that is some answers i would like to see.
Some reasonable questions but there is a much more concerning conflict when it comes to FASEA. That’s the conflict of FASEA Board members associated with training course providers using government bestowed power to force advisers to do lots of unnecessary training courses.
The amount of money FASEA receives from the 8 contributors is chicken feed compared to the amount of money course providers associated with FASEA Board members will get from advisers. Follow the big money to see what’s really driving FASEA.
Exactly my concern. I can’t help thinking it is a money spinner. Too easy to use the Financial Planner as the scapegoat. Let’s face it – it never was about the qualifications of planners, almost all of whom I associate with are pretty well educated and trained. You wouldn’t survive otherwise. My thoughts are – it will come back to bite them. Sadly the very people the RC was trying to protect, are the people that will now go unadvised – as it is no longer commercially viable.
The funders of FASEA, have been the culprits for most of the wrong doings. Remove FASEA, so everybody can get back to business.
[quote=Jimmy]so the government makes the banks pay for the funding costs of FASEA given they are the one’s that are predominately responsible for some of the worst cases of misconduct and some of you muppets think that’s a bad thing?? Perhaps they should’ve applied a fee per adviser, like they’ve done with ASIC….then you’d be on here complaining that the problems were caused by the banks and they should be the ones to fund FASEA….. Seems like we just have a group of professional whingers. [/quote]
Yeah nice one ‘Jimmy’! So you can’t see the hypocrisy here? This has nothing to do with whinging pal! It’s all about the double standards and absolute conflict of interest.
These pricks at FASEA are forcing advisers to undertake enormous hours of study and spend tens thousand of dollars doing it through the educations campuses THEY have a financial interest in! Furthermore, they’re getting paid incomes 4-5 times what the average adviser earns screwing us at the same time. If you had a clue, you’d realise that!
so the government makes the banks pay for the funding costs of FASEA given they are the one’s that are predominately responsible for some of the worst cases of misconduct and some of you muppets think that’s a bad thing?? Perhaps they should’ve applied a fee per adviser, like they’ve done with ASIC….then you’d be on here complaining that the problems were caused by the banks and they should be the ones to fund FASEA….. Seems like we just have a group of professional whingers.
What do/did you do Jimmy – occupation wise?
Jimmy, just like LIF, FASEA is designed to kill off Advisers so the Banks & Life Institutions can more easily flog very dodgy Investments, Insurance’s and Loans via Direct marketing and Robo Advisers.
Now let’s think about how well that Dodgy Direct Life Insurance is going. And those extremely dodgy sales practices highlighted in the RC.
Can’t wait to see the results of next wave of Robo Investments and Loans decimate the public whilst the Banks make another round of billions $$$
Yet another Government Department killing off small business operators. Having just spent 2 hours on the phone to the Tax Practitioner board to complete an annual declaration, having spent 2 hours on the phone to ASIC only to be told THEY made a mistake, in order to pay my ASIC funding levy.. yet another Government body involved. Don’t even mention Centrelink.
It’s beyond a joke, I’m trying to run a small business, pay wages, worry about stock market crashes and I’ve got this $%$ to put up with.
How in God’s name can this be allowed to happen when advisers have been castigated and shamed by all and sundry for the last 4-5 years about [b][b]our conflict of interest[/b][i][/i]??[/b][i][/i]
Am I still living in Australia or is this now some third world country where dictatorships rule and right and wrong no longer matter? This is so wrong and cannot be allowed to happen. Where are all the so-called brilliant journalists like Adele Ferguson to report on this?
This is an absolute disgrace!
And there it is in black and white. We all new it but now its out there. Lets see what the AFA and FPA have to say about this…….. Oh wait the silence will be deafening.
forget financial planning.. there is an industry of people who just shuffle paper between each other.. so disconnected from the real world.
Also, would be intrigued to know what bonuses are paid and for reaching what target? It’s akin to a fund manager earning a performance bonus when they post -20% return?!???
Mmm, I’m sitting back waiting for others to comment on this before I do as I suspect an avalanche of outrage is about to unleash.
No conflicts of interest here folks, never. Please move along quietly and pay your massive education or re-education bills to the Uni’s.
Oh and when will the FASEA board ALL fully disclose their conflicts of interest and exactly how much each Uni expects in revenue, text book sales, etc from FASEA’s rules.
We saw that the professional year for graduates was based on the AMP Horizons Program to train them. So does AMP make money on the Intellectual Property for the contents. We put in a submission to FASEA last November as soon as a graduate of the Horizons course saw the Prof Year content to inform FASEA and recommended changes. Check to see if a Rep from AMP is on the board.
I’ve never seen the content of the Horizons program but if it provides a good basis for the required professional year, why not use it instead of reinventing the wheel? Same as all the work that had been done previously with FPEC….do u just take the pre-existing work or start from scratch?
Having seen how AMP is going and their systemic issues within the advice business, I would absolutely build from scratch. They are hardly a business anyone looks to as the blueprint for advice…
Horizons (in its original state) was a robust and well structured programme. I know the person who developed it, and they have spent extensive time in the industry, as well as time as an associate and financial planner. Issue is that it was developed for the AMP business which effectively provided subsidies for its existence. Replicating the model across the broader industry will not work – licensees with salaried channels won’t hire someone who can’t work as an adviser let alone also provide a staff resource to act as a supervisor. This is even more pronounced for IFAs.
Yeah get funding by the banks the same ones trying to get rid of advisers and mortgage brokers and sell products directly with no consumer protections….. yeah no conflict of interest here this is a joke